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Monday, September 30, 2013

My latest batch of refurbished models are my two Farseers, my Warlock, and my Avatar. Overall, they were pretty simple and I just repainted the jewels and the bases. The jewels were a bit problematic because there were a lot of them, all in different orientations, so it took some thinking to get the reflections right. I also repainted the outer robe of my oldest Farseer, since it was originally just Dark Angels Green with a green wash.

Friday, September 27, 2013

I've got three fairly substantial and mostly painted 40K armies, and I've learned a few simple lessons as I've painted them. I like to think they all look pretty good, though the Executioners are certainly the best. Regardless of your army or paint style, there are a few things you can do to make your army striking on the tabletop.

1) Maintain a consistent style

Every model in your army should be painted in the same style, and you should keep a consistent style even on a single model. For example, my Blood Angels are painted in a bright style with strong highlights. This gives them a high contrast, almost cartoony style.

On the other hand, my Executioners are much darker, using soft drybrushed highlights. All of the color choices are muted to provide a moody look.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Eldar only have access to one dedicated transport, but
we can’t complain much about it because the new Wave Serpent is amazing. For
years, I complained about the Wave Serpent because of its extremely high price
compared to its firepower. I was in favor of lowering its cost, but the new
codex went the other way: it still costs a lot, but it brings a battle tank’s
firepower.

Monday, September 23, 2013

The Striking Scorpions were my next project in my ongoing attempt to make my Eldar army presentable. Fortunately, they turned out to be a simpler project. They had already been stripped and repainted once, as their first scheme was just Scorpion Green with a dark green wash. Their repaint was pretty well done, so I just rebased them, repainted the gems, and added their sigil to their helmets.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Howling Banshees have had it rough in 6th
Edition. As a unit that always struck first and all carried power weapons, they
were feared as one of the premiere assaults in 3rd, 4th,
and 5th Edition. However, 6th Edition took away their
ability to assault out of a transport and made their power swords AP3. The new
codex has tried to improve them, but generally falls short.

Banshees went down in points cost while maintaining their
statline and equipment, so that’s good. Their old Acrobatic rule has been changed so that they add 3” to their run
rolls, making them quite fast on foot. Even so, it doesn’t help them when they
charge and they’re not resilient enough to run across the table. Their masks
have been altered so that they reduce any enemy unit in contact with a Banshee
by 5 points of initiative. This has generally the same effect as their old I10
masks, but it does mean that they will strike simultaneously when charging
enemies in cover, rather than first. If they had assault grenades, this
wouldn’t be a problem.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

I know I've been on an Eldar kick recently, but I still love my Space Marines. I picked up the new codex and gave it a good read-through. I have to say that I'm pretty darn pleased with it. I'll get to a more thorough review once I play some games (and finish the Codex: Eldar review), but here are some initial thoughts.

The Best Parts:

1) The Chapter traits

The Chapter traits are exactly what I wanted to see. They're fluffy but still very useful, and they seem pretty well balanced. The Ultramarines give them tremendous flexibility, the Iron Hands are as tough as they should be, and the White Scars are tremendously mobile. I'm particularly happy with the Imperial Fist rules since they boost damage output consistently. Nothing flashy but lots of utility. Traits for the First Founding Chapters are all they need, eliminating the abuses of the 4th Edition trait system. Best of all, you can now run a themed army without special characters!

Monday, September 16, 2013

My reworking of old Eldar models continues with my Warp Spiders. I chose to work on the Warp Spiders next for two reasons. First, the unit is amazing on the table and I plan to be using them a lot. Second, I thought the Warp Spiders were one of my better painted Eldar units. I was really wrong about that. Somehow, their white helmets had yellowed to a bone color, I hadn't highlighted any of the black, there were chips in the paint, and I kept finding details that I had totally forgotten paint the first time. I fixed that all up, as well as repainting the bases and painting the gems.

Friday, September 13, 2013

The next two units are nominally Elites, but can be taken as
Troops if you take a Spiritseer in the army. Since the Spiritseer is a good
unit and T6 scoring units are awesome, I expect you will see them as Troops
more often than not.

Wraithguard

Wraithguard are tough as nails. With T6 and a 3+ save,
they’re as hard to wound as most monstrous creatures. Their downside is that
they lack Battle Focus and Fleet, making them quite slow for Eldar.
This can cause problems when paired with their short ranged weapons. Their
basic gun is the wraithcannon, which is S10, AP1 and the Distort rule gives them a chance to inflict Instant Death or auto-penetrate a vehicle. That’s really
terrifying, but it only has a 12” range so they’ll have to get quite close to
the enemy.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Windrider Jetbike squadrons are composed of Guardians on
jetbikes armed with twin-linked shuriken catapults. Fortunately, the jetbike
gives the model a 3+ armor save, making them just a durable as a Space Marine.
This may not sound like much, but it’s tremendously durable for any Eldar not
made out of wraithbone. In addition, Eldar jetbikes can move 36” with
turbo-boost and can move 2D6” in the Assault phase, even if they don’t assault.
Overall, this makes them one of the most mobile scoring units in the game, on
par with Necrons in a Night Scythe.

Windrider Jetbikes are the most mobile and durable Eldar
Troops, but they won’t be doing too much damage to the enemy. Each bike is
armed with a twin-linked shuriken catapult, which isn’t bad but is very short
ranged. One in three bikes can take a shuriken cannon, which gives them a bit
more bite.

Monday, September 9, 2013

I picked up three of the newer Baal Predator kits a while back, but never got around to painting them. I did start work on one, but abandoned it when I stopped playing the Blood Angels. However, recently I made a Kanban board to organize my painting (inspired by the Independent Characters Podcast). This included listing models that I had started painting but not finished, and the Baal Predator was at the top of the list. I pulled it off the shelf and finished it.

Friday, September 6, 2013

I'm working on slowly refurbishing my Eldar models that I painted almost a decade ago. Most of the models aren't too bad, as I painted them when I was starting to use my current layering approach. The only models that will be getting stripped and completely repainted are my Dark Reapers and Wraithlords (they all really need it).

First up are my Swooping Hawks. I liked the scheme overall, but I had tried to paint the wings with white and grey and then glaze them blue. This failed miserably and their wings just looked blue. I went over the wings and painted the feathers white, and then added some shading to the helmets. For the final touch, I freehanded the Swooping Hawk rune onto their helmets.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

In my mind, these are the basic Troops choice of the Eldar
army. They got much better in this edition, picking up an extra point of WS, BS,
and I as well as Bladestorm on their
shuriken catapults for only one extra point per model. They can still take a
heavy weapon platform for a reasonable price (except for the missile launcher,
which is very expensive), but the platform benefits from Battle Focus now. Finally, they are one of the units that can have
an attached Warlock, who can bring some useful psychic powers. Overall, they’re
a solid unit with good offensive output at close range.

Guardian Defenders do have the downside of short range, so
anything that survives their shooting will probably rapid fire or assault them
next turn. Even with Battle Focus,
they’ll have a tough time escaping, so Defenders tend to be very suicidal when
they take the offensive.

Monday, September 2, 2013

At the end of the day, we had done better than our previous team tournament (where we went 0-3). There's still a bunch of room for improvement. Fortunately, I think I learned a few things.

1) Wave Serpents aren't the answer for everything, regardless of what the internet may say. Don't get me wrong, they're great, but they're too expensive and too few to take on the enemy army. Like most transports, the squad inside is just as important.

2) Speaking of the squads inside, Dire Avengers are pretty awesome. A basic squad will really chew up most targets (especially with Farseer support), and are generally able to minimize return fire. Mine mostly died when they attracted heavy weapons fire, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.